Ulrich laughed at his sister’s readiness to strip knowledge of all its honor; he himself was far from thinking that concepts have no value and was well aware of what they accomplish, even if he did not exactly act as if he did. What he wanted to get at was the ungraspable nature of isolated experiences, those experiences that for obvious reasons one must cope with alone and in solitude, even when in the presence of a companion. He repeated: “The self never apprehends its impressions and productions in isolation, but always in a context—in real or imagined, similar or dissimilar correspondence with other things; and so all named things lean against each other in one or another respect or regard, in series and alignments, as links in great and not even remotely comprehensible totalities, each supported by the next and pervaded by common tensions. But that is why,” he suddenly continued in a new direction, “if for some reason this system of associations fails and none of the inner categories responds, we are immediately left again to face an indescribable and inhuman, indeed disavowed and formless, creation!” With that they were back at their point of departure; but Agathe felt above it the dark creation, the abyss that was the world, the God who should help her!

Her brother said: “Understanding gives way to unslakable aston­ishment, and the slightest experience—this little pennant of grass or the gentle sounds when your lips over there pronounce a word—becomes incomparable, immensely solitary, unfathomable in its self-glory, and has a stunning, narcotic effect...”

He fell silent, irresolutely twirling a blade of grass in his hand, and listened with pleasure as Agathe, apparently as unentangled in thought as she was unconstrained by rigor, proceeded to restore physicality to their exchange. For now she replied: “If it were drier I would want to lie down in the grass! Let’s travel! I would so much like to lie on a meadow, returned to nature as humbly as a discarded shoe!”

“But that also just means being released from all feelings,” Ulrich objected. “And God alone knows what would become of us if they didn’t show up in swarms, the loves and hates and sufferings and goodnesses that appear to be each person’s exclusive property. We would probably be deprived of all capacity to think and act, because our soul is made for a life that repeats itself, and not for what steps completely outside the order of things...” He was dejected, believed he had ventured into a void, and searchingly looked into his sister’s face with an uneasily furrowed brow.

But Agathe’s face was even clearer than the air that surrounded it and toyed with her hair as she now responded with something she had memorized: “I know not where I am, nor do I seek myself, nor do I want to know of it, nor will I have tidings. I am as immersed in the wellspring of His love as if I were beneath the surface of the ocean and could not see or feel from any side any thing but water.”